Julia Baird

Broadcast 6.30pm on 04/10/2004

Julia Baird joins George Negus on the couch. Julia speaks about her analysis of the press gallery and experiences as a reporter, editor and author of her recently published book: "Media Tarts - How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians." Baird will argue that it is wrong to simply see women as powerless victims of an unfair press and will share her tips for women about handling the media, playing the game and not giving up in politics.

GEORGE NEGUS: Now, another very different perspective on political caricature - how female politicians are depicted and represented in the media. And on the couch, Julia Baird as a simple, working journalist - meant in the nicest possible way. Julia is the opinion editor of that august rag the 'Sydney Morning Herald'. But for our purposes, she's also the author of the book 'Media Tarts - How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians'.

Welcome, Julia. Nice to see you.

JULIA BAIRD, AUTHOR, JOURNALIST: Thank you. It's a pleasure.

GEORGE NEGUS: Um, 'Media Tarts'. Great title, but why did you choose that?

JULIA BAIRD: Well, every politician is a media tart, I think. It's a little bit of wordplay. It's also the idea that women... I think particularly a lot of the case studies of the 1990s, Natasha Stott Despoja and Cheryl Kernot, were feted by the press and pursued by the press with an incredible intensity and then kind of dumped.

GEORGE NEGUS: And Pauline Hanson.

JULIA BAIRD: And Pauline Hanson, yeah, and Bronwyn Bishop there. So it's the idea of a pursuit and then kind of like once they have you, they don't respect you in the morning.

GEORGE NEGUS: (Laughs) Right, yeah. We've actually got some comments here from some kids. I'd just like your reaction. They're some very smart kids, if you ask me. Have a look at this.

GIRL 1: They're focused on and sort of made fun of.

GIRL 2: With men, men can look however they want, they can say whatever they want in Parliament and it doesn't, like, it doesn't reflect on them, it just reflects on their party. But with women, it just reflects on them as a person.

GIRL 3: It just seems that it's no-win, you know? We're not gonna get anywhere.

(FOOTAGE OF NATASHA STOTT DESPOJA)

GEORGE NEGUS: The infamous Natasha Stott Despoja's shoes. Although, I wonder - the media being the media - I mean, they...Doc Martens, weren't they, that she was wearing. I guess had she been wearing those sort of long, ridiculous high-heel things so that her calves were showing, the media would have seized on that anyway.

JULIA BAIRD: The stilettos. Probably. I mean, she kind of played with the imagery of the Doc Martens as well. She wore them on the first day of her swearing-in in Parliament and she used to refer to them a bit in speeches - just because the media loves a good cliche. It was, you know, 'Doc walking into Parliament', 'Boots and all', 'Kicking the men's heads' - those kinds of headlines. So once you let a cliche like that out of the bag, you're not gonna be able to pull it back in. So it dogged her heels - literally - for the rest of her career.

GEORGE NEGUS: And she's been a classic example, hasn't she, of what you talked about earlier - of somebody who gets picked up, the darling of the media, literally, and then dumped, discarded.

JULIA BAIRD: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important to look at the mistakes that the women do make and I do think that she should have reined back on some of that. She shouldn't have allowed herself to be filmed having her make-up done, for example.

GEORGE NEGUS: Why would a woman do that when they know the media's gonna seize on that?

JULIA BAIRD: Well, I think we know that, really, now. I think that's what we saw during the '90s. But Natasha always justified it on the grounds of, "Why not?" You know, a lot of women like kind of dressing up and being human and it's something we can all relate to. But I think that it was used so much against her.

GEORGE NEGUS: The media jump on the female bandwagon, don't they? I mean, Bronwyn Bishop - the media were hell-bent, I felt at the time, on driving her, riding her to power.

JULIA BAIRD: Journalists have been looking for our own Margaret Thatcher since the 1970s, you know, which I've called the hunt for the Steel Sheila. Which meant that sometimes...

GEORGE NEGUS: Great term, by the way. 'Steel Sheila'.

JULIA BAIRD: When a woman was elected to a backbench position, they'd be like, "So are you like Margaret Thatcher? Are you gonna be the Prime Minister? Are you gonna be the Premier?" They might not have had the numbers, it might not have been in any way possible, but because it's such a great story and it would be so interesting and Thatcher was so phenomenally successful and fascinating, I think, that it's been pursued relentlessly. But when it's unrealistic and when it translates into hype, that then does create a problem for the women involved.

GEORGE NEGUS: What is it about the male-dominated media - other than the obvious thing of hypocrisy and double standard - that means that they do treat women differently?

JULIA BAIRD: Well, there's two things. The first is, in a way, as we were speaking about before with the Steel Sheila, it is an excessive enthusiasm in the hunt for a good story. The second and the major reason is a difficulty in imagining women having authority and exercising power. So we have to probe this strange woman who might be a cabinet minister and when, you know...when they...whether they sack people or they trim their budgets or do anything which is just kind of fairly decisive, it was like, "Whoo," you know, "this woman's a..."

GEORGE NEGUS: On the other hand, you take a Pauline Hanson, it's probably the case that she may never have been really heard of in any major way had the media not shown that same excessive enthusiasm that you described, for her.

JULIA BAIRD: Instead of her being the tart that they pursued and then rejected, they rejected her straight-up and gradually had to take her more seriously as she was kind of a growing political force. And after some time, eventually did start analysing her policy and kind of beating themselves a bit on the chest for having missed the story and not understood this major change in mood.

GEORGE NEGUS: The Cheryl Kernot thing is interesting, isn't it - that apparently a woman loses totally her political credibility if she is involved in some sort of extramarital thing. Why do you think the media were as vicious as they were about her?

JULIA BAIRD: That is a really big question about the fact that... I think she was raised so high, she was such a golden girl, she had incredible credibility and respect, she was polling hugely. Don't forget, when she went to the ALP, it was really thought that she would bring them an election, you know. There were front-page newspaper polls - I mean, hyperbole - but saying, you know, 'Cheryl for PM', which is predictable. But unfortunately, at that point that she moved, it was tarnished - she was seen to have acted out of selfish ambition, she...and for impure motives.

GEORGE NEGUS: What's your gratuitous advice or other sort of advice to women considering going into politics?

JULIA BAIRD: I think they have to be particularly careful with that - with their private lives. It's treading the line between being open and accessible and honest - because I think we're so...all disillusioned with spin and we all would really welcome someone refreshing and candid and real. In fact, we talk about the enthusiasm for women in politics. That's what part of it - a lot of it - has been about. I mean, Pauline Hanson was untutored and it worked very well for her.

GEORGE NEGUS: The lying bit's interesting at this stage, because it's not a terribly important thing in Australian politics, telling the truth, is it?